CUPERTINO, Calif. — Fans at concerts and sports games may soon be stopped from using their iPhones to film the action —as a result of new technology being considered by Apple, The Times of London reported Thursday.

The California company has plans to build a system that will sense when a person is trying to film a live event using a cell phone and automatically switch off their camera.

A patent application filed by Apple, and obtained by the Times, reveals how the software would work. If a person were to hold up their iPhone, the device would trigger the attention of infra-red sensors installed at the venue. These sensors would then instruct the iPhone to disable its camera.

Yesterday ESPN announced they will remove all poker-related programming and advertising (except for this year’s World Series of Poker).

Wimps. And the gambling industry is no better. Industry lobbyist, former senator Al D’Amato, claims “[poker] is a game of skill” and therefore should not be subjected to federal anti-gambling laws. “Regulate it, but don’t ban it,” he says.

Give me a break. The cowardice of business in standing up for free markets never ceases to amaze me.

What wimps! Why don’t they have the courage to say the government has NO business intervening in an activity between consenting adults? I’d hope the poker lobby and the leading sports network would defend the game and its players. Instead they push legal tricks or distance themselves from poker.

Scientists at Qatar University claim to have developed artificial clouds to provide shade for stadia and training grounds at the 2022 World Cup.

The fierce summer heat in the Gulf has led to concerns about conditions for players and fans at the tournament. Temperatures in June and July can reach up to 50 C.

Qatar were announced as hosts in December, and Fifa president Sepp Blatter initially said he expected the 2022 competition to be moved to winter.

But Blatter has since stated that he feels the tournament will go ahead as planned in the summer months. Qatar plan to air condition their World Cup stadia via solar power, and now scientists have designed the ‘clouds’, which can be produced at a cost of $500,000 (about £310,000) each.

New Rule: With the Super Bowl only a week away, Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That’s right, for all the F-15 flyovers and flag waving, football is our most successful sport because the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poor teams … just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin has a population of 100,000. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets — who next year need to just shut the hell up and play.

Now, me personally, I haven’t watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson’s nipple popped out during half time, and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned my eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it – who doesn’t love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving each other brain damage on a giant flat-screen TV with a picture so realistic it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister?

It’s no surprise that some 100 million Americans will watch the Super Bowl next week — that’s 40 million more than go to church on Christmas — suck on that, Jesus! It’s also 85 million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity…

It was the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota where the Vikings were due to play this week. I guess even Mother Nature really wants Vikings quarterback Brett Favre (who’s been in the news for non-football reasons) to retire:

Contestants and their fans will converge in Montreal on October 27, 2010 for the first ever laughter competition — Le Grand Championnat de Rire de Montreal. Comedy contests are common, however this will be the world’s first televised laughing contest. The contest was inspired by my documentary Laughology, currently distributed by The Disinformation Company, in which I demonstrate that people can laugh spontaneously by using various “active laughter” techniques.

Contestants across Quebec will compete in diabolical laughter competitions, contagious laughter face-offs, and competitive laughter duels to see who will be crowned the “Best Laugher in Quebec.” The show is a pilot for an eventual international laughter competition to demonstrate that laughter could itself be a competitive sport.

The Championnat is a based on the revolutionary concept that because laughter is contagious: laughing makes people laugh. It involves games designed to produce natural contagious laughter. The whole event is also being filmed for Rire Extreme, a documentary for CANAL D. I got the idea for my documentary Laughology after meeting Doug Collins, an American who is said to have the most contagious laugh in the world:

I believe that because of Quebec’s tradition of Joie de Vivre and Quebec may have laughers who are as good or better than Collins. This summer Laughter contests where held at major Quebec festivals, including le Festival du Grand Rire in Quebec, The Western Festival of St. Tite and le Festival de Poutine du Drummonville. The winners of those contests have been invited to the Championnat which takes place at in Montreal in a special ring.

We really found some extraordinary laughers. I’m afraid to imagine what happens when we get them all in the same room. I hope that the idea of a laughter competition is to spread the positive, healthy emotions of laughter. And I’m trying to prove that laughter could be a competitive sport.

Contestants are coming from around Quebec however, we have left one spot open for one last great laugher. Auditions will be held on Oct 27th at Salla Rossa at 5 p.m. Please email hey@laughology.info. to be put on the list.

New Delhi, India — Chotu is not happy to see visitors. He is busy scratching himself and intensely surveying his surroundings when he’s approached.

He and his buddies Pinki and Mangu are in the middle of their eight-hour shifts. They have important jobs to do. They are some of more than 100,000 security forces protecting people during the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

But Chotu and his gang are a special force trained to put a stop to any monkeying around near the stadiums. Chotu, Pinki and Mangu are langur monkeys.

Their trainers said each one has the ability to scare off 50 potential attackers — namely the wild smaller macaque monkeys that roam the streets and buildings of Delhi.

The wild monkeys are known for some naughty habits. You can’t blame the macaques; they’re just being themselves. The wild monkeys are in a densely populated city where they occasionally have run-ins with humans — especially if there is a chance to snatch some food.

In addition to the World Cup, this summer featured RoboCup — an international tournament in which teams of soccer-playing robots square off. The level of play is low, and the game is often unsettling to watch, as when a fallen robot player struggles fruitlessly to right itself, limbs flailing. The hope, however, is that by 2050, a robot team skilled enough to compete against humans will be developed.

MoeZilla writes: Fans waited in line for two hours to claim a California baseball stadium’s 1,250 bobblehead dolls representing the two candidates vying to replace Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. But “when the wacky…

Here at the disinformation New York offices there are those who couldn’t care less about sports, and others (that would be me) who spend way too much time in the world of sports, playing, watching, coaching, trash talking, etc. In this Democracy Now video, founding editor of the Indypendent, Arun Gupta, debates Nation Magazine sports columnist Dave Zirin.

That new Michael Jordan campaign for Hanes, really does have people buzzing, though it’s not Jordan’s “lie-flat collar” that they’re fixated on. Viewers instead seem to be stupefied by his attempt to bring back the “Hitler mustache,” which has pretty soundly been out of fashion since, you know, Hitler.

Technically called a “toothbrush mustache,” this facial styling was actually quite popular in the 1920s, and still makes the occasional appearance on the faces of foul-tempered tyrants like Robert Mugabe and J. Jonah Jameson. Maybe Jordan feels he simply transcends the clear cultural need to avoid looking like history’s most vile psychopath. Maybe he’s on a quest to reclaim a symbolic styling of the industrial working class, and a mediocre underwear ad seemed like the right forum.

Or maybe the copywriters simply loved the irony of mocking some poor guy’s “bacon neck” while the star of the ad blatantly sports a damn Hitler ‘stache.

In June 2010 the world’s most popular sporting event – soccer’s FIFA World Cup – will come to Africa for the first time. With less than two weeks remaining before the first match of the month-long tournament, one can practically hear the soon to be famous vuvuzelas – ubiquitous and deafening plastic horns that South Africans love to blow during the games – all the way around the world, such is the gathering media hype.

There is no doubting the overwhelming sense of excitement at large in South Africa. However, if one digs a little deeper, there are also those who question the vast sums being spent by the government of what is still a nation with millions of its citizens living in poverty.

With that in mind, in 2008 I began making the documentary film World Cup Soccer In Africa: Who Really Wins? to investigate what South Africans, across the social spectrum, believed the staging of the FIFA World Cup would mean for them personally, and for the country as a whole. The objective was to assemble a record of hopes and expectations, at that time in the country’s history – something to look back upon after the tournament was over, and in the context of actual experience (as explored in interviews to be conducted subsequently in late 2010).

There was, without exception, interest in the project expressed by everyone who was approached for an interview. The ultimate list of interviewees was essentially determined by logistics – whether they were present in a particular city on the same day that I was. For example, as luck had it, Archbishop Tutu…

Alex Lightman was the CTO for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization. Now he compares the NASA Mission Control room to Caesars Palace Race and Sports Book, and asks whether we…

Seems like a stupid question right? But remember the old saying, ‘there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers…’ From Discovery News:

Since the advent of our nation’s pastime, there has been a longstanding tradition of the fan who thinks it will be just HILARIOUS to jump onto a baseball diamond and get his or her 15 minutes of fame before getting tackled by security guards.

On Monday, 17-year-old Steve Consalvi decided to do just that during a Philadelphia Phillies game.

Except this time, the overzealous fan who told his dad he was looking for a “once in a lifetime experience” got a little more than he bargained for: he got Tasered. It’s the first time a Taser has been used to stop a spectator who’s running on the field.

The kid’s OK, and now the Phillies and Philadelphia police are investigating whether the officer’s use of the Taser was appropriate…